The fort is circular, with a curious pointed, perfectly solid wing on one side, the design of which nobody can now discover. Another fort, built by the Spaniards on the hill opposite my window, has the same singular appendage, which is, however, well preserved and appropriated to some military use.
The ruined fort which we passed possesses a subterranean passage, leading to the government house, in which are numerous mysterious apartments, having the always-attractive reputation of being haunted. At various times, various ladies and gentlemen have undertaken to penetrate them, but these irreverent pursuers of spirits under difficulties are always summarily dismissed by the inhospitable ghost.
Farther on, we found numerous desolated plantations, presided over by dilapidated country houses. It is universally found, that since the emancipation of the slaves, some thirty years since, the impoverished owners are obliged to abandon their estates.
The negroes now cannot be coaxed or hired or driven to work more than is absolutely necessary to keep soul and body from a divorce. No public improvements have been built since the emancipation. It is doubtless true that the wrecking trade, which of late years is become so flourishing, has, in its speculating, I may say gambling, influences, had a tendency to destroy legitimate industry. What is the use of working their black fingers to the bone, when any day an ill wind may blow them enough good or goods to make everybody rich? when any wind that is good for anything, and knows what it is about, comes to them dressed in silks and satins of the latest fashion, sometimes with a Paris bonnet on its head, sometimes loaded with jewelry which it lays at their feet, and begs they will be good enough to accept as a present.
April 17th.—The town library is well filled with books, excellently bound, none of them in paper or muslin. It has also a respectable number of curiosities; there we pass a pleasant early morning hour.
To-day my first shopping excursion in Havana. We heard enticing accounts of the great bargains to be made here, not only in wrecked goods, but in English importations free of duty. I found, however, nothing of the sort; on the contrary, heaps of wrecked and damaged goods lying about the doors of the shops, or strewn upon the sidewalks; mostly sell as high as the same thing uninjured in New York.
These merchants are constantly in the practice of wetting and wilting their superannuated goods in salt water and then displaying them as wrecked articles, thus imposing on foreigners and ignorant customers, who suppose that, as a matter of course, they are making “stunning bargains.”
After dinner, like everybody else, we drove to hear the Zouave band. On Tuesday and Friday afternoons they find themselves the centre of a large admiring carriage audience. On benches ranged immediately around them, are seated crowds of colored nurses with English infants, while older children are running and playing everywhere with the sweet inexhaustible happiness which children find in every clime under the sun.
These Africans play operatic music with expression as well as precision. Like all the negroes of these English islands, they are taught reading, writing, and the elements of an ordinary school education. The surgeon of the army tells me that their ready emotional nature and quickness for time and tune, nearly atone for the, to them, unattainable intellectual and artistic culture ordinarily necessary to the full expression of these musical compositions.
We everywhere find coolness the thing most sought by these adopted children of the sun. Witness their universal white linen umbrellas to whose blinding glare no coolness could ever reconcile me. Witness also the prevailing thick, white flannel coats, vests, and trousers worn by the gentlemen as a morning and business dress. In a country where dust and mud are matters of merely books and faith, and where perspiration is a matter for draughts of air to manufacture fevers of, this soft, cool, non-conducting dress has its advantages.